


To Build a Home

by neversaydie



Series: cock it and pull it [33]
Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Declarations Of Love, Depression, Everyone Needs A Hug, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Post episode 75, Post suicide attempt, Post-Canon, Suicidal Thoughts, Trauma, ben vs the world, episode 75 spoilers, sammy vs his self esteem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-05-01 07:58:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14515890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neversaydie/pseuds/neversaydie
Summary: It's not that Sammy doesn't know what he'd expected, it's that he hadn't expected anything at all.He hadn't expected to be on this plane of existence, let alone still in King Falls, and he certainly hadn't expected to inadvertently announce to the entire town that he'd been one step away from killing himself the entire time they'd known him."You stupid asshole," Ben sobs into his neck brokenly, clinging to Sammy like he can hold him together if he just tries hard enough. "You stupid fucking asshole. You can't do that to me."[in which Sammy decides to keep breathing.]





	To Build a Home

**Author's Note:**

> TW: suicidal ideation more explicit than canon (brief mentions of methods and suicide watch), brief thought of self-harm, self hatred at a pretty typical Sammy level.

It's not that Sammy doesn't know what he'd expected, it's that he hadn't _expected_ anything at all. He hadn't expected to be on this plane of existence, let alone still in King Falls, and he certainly hadn't expected to inadvertently announce to the entire town that he'd been one step away from killing himself the entire time they'd known him.

Ben practically throws himself through the door of Ron's truck when they pull up outside the auditorium, not even waiting for Sammy to get out before he flings his arms around his neck. His own car was totalled in rainbow light explosion (a wave of pressure swept down the mountain and knocked him off his feet, shorting out everything electronic nearby, although most of the debris missed him entirely), and a definitely-not-scared Ron picked him up from the side of the road after the broadcast signal cut out and made everybody panic.

Ron got them down the mountain as fast as he could, his passenger smelling of fire and fear and not saying a word.

Both Sammy and Ben are crying, the kind of unselfconscious, uncontrollable sobbing Sammy hasn't allowed himself since he was a child too young to know that catharsis only made the pain worse. It's not a choice - he knew that once he started crying about Jack, he wouldn't be able to stop.

"You stupid asshole," Ben sobs into his neck brokenly, clinging to Sammy like he can hold him together if he just tries hard enough. "You stupid _fucking_ asshole. You can't do that to me."

"I saw him, Ben," Sammy's hands are sitting limply on his thighs, seatbelt still fastened, as he screws his eyes shut and tries to find the energy to breathe. "I saw him, and he… He was right there, and I couldn't… I couldn't fucking..."

"Boys, let's get y'all home," Troy gently pries Ben away from Sammy, handing him off to Emily who looks just about as wrecked as any of them. Most of the people at the live broadcast have left, to check on whoever they have at home in the power outage or maybe just hold them close, but there are still a fair few around to watch the drama play out.

After only a second's pause to see if Sammy will do it himself, Troy reaches over and unbuckles his seatbelt for him, giving Ron a nod of thanks where he's climbing out of the driver's side. Troy's dealt with people who are traumatised or in shock more often than most, and he's possibly the only one among them with a relatively cool head right now. Or at least it's too dark for the fear on his face to show.

"Sammy, you come stay with me and Loretta tonight… so's we can keep an eye on you," he puts a firm hand on Sammy's shoulder, drawing him out of the shellshocked fog. The sobs have stopped now, instead he's got silent tears rolling down his blotchy face with a thousand-yard stare already starting to set in. He looks a little banged up from the woods and the explosion, but they've got bigger things to worry about right now. "I've gotta get up the mountain and-"

"He's staying with me," Ben cuts in desperately, a wild look in his eyes like it's only Emily holding him back that's keeping him from hauling Sammy out of the vehicle himself. "You're staying with _me_ , Sammy. You're not going anywhere."

That first night is rough, lying sleepless on Ben's couch as they're periodically woken by news from the rest of the town. Chet got out by the skin of his teeth, but the station itself is a wreck. Walt is nowhere to be found. The rainbow lights are gone, as is Ben's job until he can figure out another venue to broadcast from or the station is repaired.

And Sammy, aside from some bumps and bruises and a nasty gash on the side of his jaw that'll most likely scar, is fine.

Unfortunately.

He wakes up on the first morning (after about two hours of fitful dozing out of sheer exhaustion, as he replays Jack being ripped away again over and over behind his eyes) to find all the sharp objects in Ben's apartment hidden... and can't really find the energy to be offended.

Suicide watch gets really old, really fast - there's no lock on the bathroom door, no medication in the medicine cabinet, and he's left alone for approximately ten minutes at a time, maximum. Sammy's surprised he even gets to keep his belt and shoelaces, especially when it becomes clear that his friends are taking it in turns to babysit him.

Mary gives him an almighty whack upside the head and a hug immediately thereafter, telling him he's an idiot with an undercurrent of reluctantly painful understanding. Troy is just sad - pure, plain sad that Sammy didn't tell him about what was going on, didn't even let him try to help. Emily tries to talk to him about counselling, talks about her own experiences with therapy after her abduction and tries to convince him it will make things easier… although she doesn't push too hard when Sammy dully refuses her gentle attempts to help.

Herschel grabs him into a crushing hug, when Troy brings him over from the hospital to visit (Sammy had offered to go, despite the fact the idea of seeing Cecil the vessel back in his coma makes him break out in a cold sweat, but they'd figured anything that got Herschel out of that room was probably a better idea), and curses a blue streak while he pats Sammy on the back so hard it's almost like punching him. Sammy doesn't think he's ever teared up from being called a _dumb son of a bitch_ before, but he'll take it over the grey nothing he's feeling most of the time.

And Ben… Ben is angry. Worse than angry, he's _wounded_. He seethes at the idea Sammy didn't talk to him and would have just _left him_ , just walked off into the void without even telling him, without even saying goodbye, without even leaving a body behind so Ben would know he'd at least found some kind of peace or…

Ben hugs Sammy a lot, after he doesn't die. Sammy comes to expect the angry cuddles, the forceful grabs that say 'I love you, you fucking douche' and 'don't you leave me' and 'I need to make sure you're really here'. It's too raw to talk about, at least when they're living in close quarters (Ben won't let him rent another apartment, point blank), so Ben does a lot of communication via one-sided hugging.

Sometimes, if it's a day where he feels less numb than usual, Sammy even hugs back.

He has no expectations of the weeks that follow, not least because he didn't think he'd still be breathing through them, but somehow they manage to blow some of the fog away from his world anyway. Emily moves back in with her mom for a little while, since hearing the lights again rattled her usually stable foundations, and Ben sleeps even less than usual as nightmares about hearing someone else he loves get taken on air keep him awake and wired.

Sammy wakes him up when he cries out and lets him cling, usually. He spends a lot of time in Ben's bed, and almost manages to smile when he thinks of the jokes Jack would have made about it.

The rest of the town is… weirdly nice to him. Sammy's suspicious of it at first, figures it's pity or guilt or he's somehow manipulated them into thinking he's a good person just like he'd manipulated Ben, but over time he comes to realise they might - maybe - actually like him. He gets smiles in the grocery store, people telling him they miss the show, and even Cynthia Higgenbaum corners him outside Rose's to yell at him about being an _idiot_ and how dare he even consider taking his deviant ass off the air.

It's… kind of okay, actually. He almost believes they don't hate him, now and then.

Ron helps a lot, picking Sammy up in the morning a couple of days a week and telling (not asking) him he's coming to do odd jobs at the bait and tackle while the station is out of action. It helps to work with his hands, doing repetitive tasks like attaching flies to the ready-made hooks or refilling the stacks of tourist pamphlets, and Ron always tells him he's done a good job in a way that doesn't feel forced (mainly because he tells him when he's fucked up too). Having something to focus on, feeling vaguely useful, helps suppress the urge to grab the nearest sharp object and just go to town.

(Ron takes off the leather cuff on his wrist just once, after hours, and lets Sammy catch a glimpse of the puckered, vertical scar beneath it.

"Breathing's worth it, dumbass," he grunts, buckling the bracelet back up before heading out to take in the sign for the night.

Sammy pretends he didn't see his hands shake.)

He's sitting out on the dock one evening, watching the light fade and trying not to think of where the fuck Jack is inside that godforsaken mountain (he can't sit out in the dark anymore, he starts shivering and can't stop, doesn't know if it's the trauma or whatever side effects of the void Walt had mentioned - Jesus, _Walt_ ), when unusually light footsteps creak up the wood towards him.

For a crazy, freefall second, he thinks it's Jack.

Then Ben's beaten-up chucks and too-long skinny jeans come into view, the total opposite of Ron's cut-offs and burly calves or Jack's smooth muscle and fancy sneakers, and Sammy breathes again. He goes back to staring at the water, tossing little pieces of gravel he'd picked up from shore into the lake just to watch the ripples - to know he can change something, even for a moment.

"Ron said you were out here," Ben sits down beside him - legs too short to touch the water, of course. If he weren't so numb, Sammy would have a joke ready to go.

Ben lets the silence sit for a while before he reaches over and steals some of Sammy's gravel, trying to skip it across the water with a bit more effort and spin. That actually catches Sammy's interest some, because he'd never learned how to skip stones. His dad wasn't big on father-son bonding time, and he vaguely wonders who taught Ben the trick to it.

"You gotta flick your wrist, like…" Ben grabs his hand and shows him, fingers leaving patches of warmth on Sammy's perpetually-cold skin. Sammy tries the motion a few times before he gets a stone to give a pathetic hop on the surface of the lake and twitches the ghost of a smile at his friend. "Ron said you laughed, today."

"I did?" He replies dully, not really giving a shit if he did or didn't. It's not like he deserves any measure of happiness or humour when he not only couldn't get to Jack but fucked everything up for the town even more in the process. How can they pretend to even stand to look at him?

"Yeah, he said a kid knocked a bucket of worms over him and you…" Ben trails off when Sammy's lips give the barest curl, sighing quietly through his nose before turning back to the water again. It's almost dark, but there's still a little light left. "Is it getting better, man? This… you?"

"Jack's not here," Sammy mutters, like that's enough of an answer, and Ben tosses the rest of his tiny stones into the water with an angry jab of his hand. They make a decent splash, all breaking the surface together - enough that a spot of water lands on the knee of Sammy's jeans.

"No, he's not here. And I'm really, _really_ fucking sorry he's not here," water seeps into denim, disappearing from glassy to dark in the half-light as Ben turns to look at him. Sammy can't look back. "But _I_ am."

"It's not…"

"I know it's not the same, okay? I know," Ben sounds wrecked, like he's right on the edge of desperate, and Sammy can hear him crying out from a nightmare in the crack of his voice. He's been working so hard to hold it together for Sammy, for Emily, for everyone - what the hell are they gonna do if he breaks too? "I'm not Jack, but I'm worth sticking around for. I-I've gotta be worth waking up for. I am."

"Of course-"

"Everyone has always left me. Emily, my… m-my dad, everyone," Ben swallows and clears his throat, voice as firm as he can make it. Sammy's never heard him mention his dad before, not once in their entire friendship. "But _you're_ not going to. Because I know you love me too much for that. You _told me_ you love me."

He sounds so _sure_ , like Sammy could tell him the sky was green and he'd agree without a second's hesitation. It hurts and heals in equal measure, because Sammy realises Ben isn't lying about how he feels - not even a little bit. Ben cuts through the noise like a beam of light, desperate to guide him out of the fog.

"Ben…"

"Sammy," his tone wavers at that, and for the first time Sammy lets himself picture what would have happened if the kid had found him hanging from the shower rail. Jesus fucking Christ. "Just, promise me. Please. We can get you help, we can figure it all out, but I need you to promise you're not gonna leave me. I know that's selfish, and I know you don't believe me when I say it, but I love you too much to let you go."

He sniffles, turning away so he can wipe his face on his sleeve, and something in Sammy peeks out of the numb blanket cast across his soul and says 'wait, one of ours is hurting'.

Every single day for the past three years, Sammy had wondered if this was going to be it - if today would be when he hung a noose from something sturdy or walked into Lake Hatchenhaw with his pockets full of stones or bled out drunk in a warm bathtub.

And every night, he'd gone to the station and Ben - Ben and his laugh and his easy affection and his _love_ that shone unfettered from every atom of him - had given him another reason to keep going. Until Sammy ran out of even that flimsy amount of cope and needed it to stop, needed Ben to stop giving him a reason to exist.

Maybe… Maybe he can try and let Ben give him a reason again. For a little while.

"Okay," he finds he has to clear his own throat, choked up in a way he hadn't expected. He hasn't cried since he came out of Perdition Wood breathing - maybe that's part of the problem. "Okay, Ben."

Ben shakes his head like he's not hearing Sammy right, like the trust is too broken for just an _okay_ to fix them now.

"Don't tell me what I wanna hear if you're just gonna- I can't, Sammy, I-"

"I'm not going anywhere," Sammy clears his throat again and finally looks at his friend, needing to set his jaw so it doesn't give away how raw he is. Ben's a mess, but it's weirdly comforting to know they're both fucked up right now. "I… I can't promise that for tomorrow, or the day after, but I promise I'll keep trying to stay. For you."

The hug is as sudden as ever, but less angry than the others they've had recently. Ben huffs out something like a sob and Sammy buries his face in his narrow shoulder, and the couple of tears that slip free feel like they carry more weight than a little water possibly can. There's a crack in his chest, somewhere, and a little ice starts to melt in the face of Ben's warmth.

Maybe Jack can see them, from the mountain. Maybe he wants Sammy to stay, too.

They sit holding each other until the last of the light goes, until Sammy starts his (supernatural) shivers and Ben pulls back to scrub the cuff of his sweater across his swollen eyes again. Things have been so bad for the kid for so long… perhaps if breathing is something that makes things better for Ben, Sammy can keep doing it for a little while longer. Jack would have liked that... will like that.

Sammy takes the hand up that's offered, strong and steady where his own falters, and follows Ben out of the dark.


End file.
